The Broiler Chicken: A Symbol of Our Time

Guest: Richard Thomas, Professor of Archaeology, University of Leicester Thousands of years from now, what do you suppose archaeologists will consider the symbol of our time? Like the Bronze Age or Iron Age, maybe we’ll be the iPhone Age? Actually, we may end up being remember as the Chicken Age. Global food preferences have made the broiler chicken the most common terrestrial vertebrate on the planet. More than 65 billion are slaughtered each year. And they’ve been bred for lots of juicy meat, so they’ve got weird, warped bones that may baffle future scientists uncovering piles and piles of them in our landfills.